NHS Mandate pledges diabetes commitment

A commitment to improving the management and care of people with diabetes has been laid out in the recently published NHS Mandate.

The document reaffirms the commitment of the Government and NHS England to ‘Healthier You’, the NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme.

Additionally, it ensures that local areas will be held to account through the CCG Improvement and Assessment Framework.

An NHS England spokesperson said: “This mandate continues the approach set out for 2016-17 and then carried forward through 2017-18. It maintains the direction already set and defines annual deliverables for 2018-19 that will keep us on track for meeting our 2020 goals.”

Page 14 of the document laid out targets, which included the pledge that by July 2018, the results of the CCG improvement and assessment framework for 2017-18 would be published.

The document stated: “This will continue to include an independent assessment of CCG performance for each of cancer, dementia, maternity, mental health, learning disabilities and diabetes.

“With NHS Improvement, ensure commissioners and providers deliver their 2018-19 operational plans, which will deliver year two of locally agreed STPs.”

Diabetes-related overall 2020 goals include:

Measurable reduction in child obesity as part of the Government’s childhood obesity plan.

A total of 100,000 people supported to reduce their risk of diabetes through the NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme.

Measurable reduction in variation in the management and care for people with diabetes, including improving the achievement of the NICE recommended treatment targets whilst driving down variation between CCGs.

With support from Public Health England, contribute to the reduction of preventable illness and associated hospital admissions through the implementation of tangible, preventative interventions in the NHS.

Fund, and deliver with Public Health England, a programme from April 2017 to March 2019, that will support the implementation of identified preventative interventions at scale by the NHS, in collaboration with local health and care partners.

The mandate also states that the NHS will receive an additional £2.8 billion overall between 2017-18 and 2019-20, taking funding to over half a trillion pounds from 2015 to 2020.

But Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Jeremy Hunt said the extra money comes with a “clear responsibility for the NHS to minimise waste and make the best use of its resources”.

Robin Hewings, head of policy at Diabetes UK, said: “The NHS mandate reaffirms the commitment of the Government and NHS England to continue reducing variation in diabetes services and Healthier You, the NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme. On top of this, local areas are being held to account through the CCG Improvement and Assessment Framework.

“This is good news because the NHS in England has made a strong start in changing services since diabetes was made a priority for NHS England. The prevention programme is on track to hit its very ambitious target of reaching 100,000 people a year by 2020, while many local NHS areas are also making big improvements to diabetes services.

“These changes are tangibly improving the lives of people with diabetes, as well as making the NHS sustainable in the long term by helping people with diabetes to avoid serious, life-changing and costly complications.”